I’ve always hated Christina Aguilera’s histrionic melismatics and pretentious, over-the-top trilling, so when she flubbed the lyrics to the “The Star Spangled Banner” a few months back during the Super Bowl, as funny as it was, her memory lapse didn’t offend me as much as the overall performance did (there’s rarely a half-note she doesn’t deem worthy – despite the unworthiness of the result – to elongate into five. Besides, in my opinion, “The Star Spangled Banner” is a heinous song that shouldn’t be our national anthem anyway. I’ve long been a proponent that “America The Beautiful” should immediately replace it as our country’s anthem – but that’s another conversation).
So, as a non-fan, when her BURLESQUE film – far and away the worst film of 2010 – was critically reviled and royally flopped, I couldn’t have cared less. It deserved to be loathed and unseen.
It didn’t phase me, too, when her “Bionic” CD – far and away the worst CD of 2010 (I’m sensing a theme here…) also bombed. It was a fiasco of epic proportions. Again, when shit is, well, shit, it should be called out as such.
And, while divorce may be tragic, it happens to everyone, and maybe more so in the entertainment industry.
So, you might ask why I bring up all these tidbits about a performer I think of only once a week while watching NBCs “The Voice”? Well, she talks about all these issues in the new issue of W magazine.
Still, why do I care? Well, I don’t.
What I DO want to know, though, is WHERE THE FUCK did the other half of Aguilera go?!
Now, before I’m accused of being cruel, this is not meant to be an insult to Aguilera. This isn’t about mocking her size, which she vauntingly displays. It’s about the Curse of Photoshop.
I know that photo-shopping has been the norm in magazines for years, but this is beyond specious. I mean, bad enough it’s 2011 and the press is still defining beauty/glamor/style by the waistline of our female stars. And we all know Aguilera recently gained weight as the mother/maturing woman she has become. But are the editors at W that stupefyingly, uhhhh, stupid that they don’t realize that we can see as such every week while watching “The Voice”? The girl has curves, and she flaunts them. I wonder, has Aguilera approved this cover?
Is this really what a girl wants?
Recent magazine covers of other plus-size female artists have also been photoshopped, if to a lesser degree. If you were unaware of her already, perusing recent tabloids (e.g. Rolling Stone, Q, Elle, Out) you’d never garner that the prodigiously gifted Adele was a lusciously plump powerhouse. And Britney Spears and Janet Jackson are amongst the most blatantly airbrushed/photoshopped female entertainers of the past decade or so, trimming inches off their bodies. Following Mariah Carey, of course.
It’s not a new phenomenon, as I already noted, and it’s not merely for the overweight either (paging Madonna…). But the acceptance into our pop culture mindset doesn’t make it any less offensive.
Their names might not have been of the household kind, but lest you foolhardily believe otherwise, it’s been a terrible few weeks for music lovers, as we lost three gifted ladies of varying genres.
I first heard about Marianne Joan Elliott-Said AKA Poly Styrene when I started working at Greenwich Village’s long gone, but no-less legendary Tower Records in the 1980s. The sprawling “record store” was, atmospherically, a fantastic place to work – where variations of society’s children gathered, where the punks mingled with the straight-edged mixed with the preppy juxtaposed with the hip-hoppers gelled with the jazz purists jumbled with the blues men all jumbled, of course, with the rock and rollers. As a Brooklyn boy, I’ve traveled so often to Tower for any and all my musical needs for years that I jumped at the chance to work there when I got in through a trick I picked up. It was a corporate entity, sure, but with a punk rock aesthetic.
Alan (not that aforementioned trick, BTW) was a coworker who introduced me to a lot of that ‘punk rock aesthetic’ that I wasn’t totally familiar with. One of those artists was X-Ray Spex. Styrene was the lead singer of this brash, messy, discombobulated English Punk band that made beautiful noise, and whose“Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”is seminal punk rock. Their classic punk album, Germ Free Adolescents was released on CD while I worked at Tower, and I fell in love with their awesome cacophony.
Sadly – or ironically, if you will – Styrene’s solo album, GENERATION INDIGO, was released a day after her death (April 25th), and nearly three decades after her only other solo debut TRANSLUCENCE.
Read Robert Christgau’s Poly obit from NPR HERE.And here is a great live performance of “Oh Bondage…”, taken from the 1977 documentary PUNK IN LONDON
The ‘high lonesome’ sound rarely sounded so simultaneously earthly and ethereal than when sung by bluegrass pioneer Hazel Dickens, who passed away on April 21st. I’ve not been overtly familiar with Dickens full catalogue, but a few years ago, I actually did some further research of her music after seeing the documentary HARLAN COUNTY, USA, in which she appeared and contributed a few songs to the soundtrack (she also appeared in John Sayles’ MATEWAN). The two albums I own (besides that soundtrack) are a great 1990s Rounder compilation A FEW OLD MEMORIES, and the great duet album with Alice Gerrard called, appropriately enough, HAZEL AND ALICE (they actually recorded a few collaborative albums in the 1970s which have since been issued on CD and that I really must own).
Here’s a 2-part PBS OUTLOOK (from West Virginia) on Hazel, followed by a great duet with Gerrard from HAZEL AND ALICE called “The Sweetest Gift, A Mother’s Smile (Coats)”
Luka Sulic & Stjepan Hauser (Courtesty their official Facebook page)
Some of the most profoundly poignant, hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I’ve had the trembling pleasure of hearing have come from the cello. It’s the closest a musical instrument has ever come to the innate cries of the human heart, and I can say (even as an atheist) that if there is a god, surely his/her voice speaks through one. It moves me beyond words.
But don’t let my description deter or confuse you. I don’t mean to imply that the sounds of a Cello are purely mellow or forlornly. A Cello also stimulates me into pure, unmitigated eargasm. Case in point…
Spelunking YouTube recently, I stopped on this magnificent duo who call themselves 2Cellos. Their names are Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser and they are from Slovenia and Croatia and what they have done to Michael Jackson’s classic “Smooth Criminal” is, to overuse an often overused cliché, nothing short of breathtaking.
Classical purists might scoff (probably because these boys are beautiful), but that’s what purists do. Me? I’m in musical ecstasy (oh, and not because these boys are beautiful).
Update July 24 – Initially, the duo originally uploaded their video to YouTube independently, but that has since been taken down. They signed with Sony Masterworks and have released their debut CD, a thrilling rock/classical hybrid running the gamut from Nirvana to Jackson to Nine Inch Nails to Coldplay. They have their own official Vevo/YouTube page which you can click to see above, and have reuploaded “Smooth Criminal”.
2Cellos (Luka Sulic & Stjepan Hauser Courtesty their official Facebook page)
As a pre-teen gay boy, I was entrenched in my own world. At 10 or 11 years old, I had one of those little portable transistor radios (the ones with the plastic strap to hang from your wrist or bicycle bars) that I slept with under my pillow, where I can escape a confused, but exciting, new realization. Even at that young age, I would always listen to talk radio or all news stations (as I rarely could sleep to music). But one evening, for whatever reason I can’t even fathom to remember (perhaps musical divine intervention?), I listened to WABC (AM radio ruled in the 1970s) while in my bed on the floor, and “Poetry Man” came wafting through my dreamscape in the middle of the night. I was immediately transfixed at the sound of this woman’s voice which had awoken me from my deep slumber…and it’s otherworldly hold on me. Both the PHOEBE SNOW album and “Poetry Man” are entities that have haunted me since, by a singer, woman and mother I’ve grown to admire even more as the years progressed (including a deeper appreciation for her as a comedic entity with her many appearances in the 1980s and 1990s on Howard Stern’s radio show. Such a good friend – and fan – was Stern that he asked Snow to sing at his wedding to his wife, Beth, in 2008.)
Snow sorta “quit” music only a few years following her immediate success after the birth of her daughter, Valerie (who was born in 1975 severely brain damaged) knowing a full-fledged career as pop star would mean abandoning a child with hardcore special needs. She continued to make albums, but since Snow refused to institutionalize her daughter and cared for Valerie at home, she became one of the most sought after commercial jingle singers, which paid well, and helped the financial woes that come when caring for a handicapped youngster, and allowed her never to be away from her precious child. Valerie passed away in March of 2007 at the age of 31.
Back in the late 1990s, I worked the weekend overnight reception desk of the now-defunct Sony Music Studios on West 54th st. I was listening to Phoebe Snow’s self-titled 1974 debut CD when I glanced down at the schedule for the weekend and saw that she had a session that evening (I believe it was a mastering session). I was thrilled to finally be able to tell her, however succinctly, what her music and voice has meant to me now, and as that scared 10 year old gay boy from Brooklyn. She was honored and moved at my story, and we spoke briefly every time she came into the studio. I’m not one of those silly fans who ask for autographs, but now – over a decade later – I wish I had her sign the CD that I was listening to. Snow passed away on April 26th. (You can read her obituary HERE)
R.I.P Phoebe…your miraculous voice will be forever missed.
Here’s Phoebe singing Mahalia Jackson’s “Moving Up A Little Higher” during a televised Earth Day Weekend back in April of 1990…
Queen of Rock N Roll, Stevie Nicks, is set to release her first solo (non-live) studio CD since 2001’s TROUBLE IN SHANGRI-LA on May 3rd. Her 7th solo CD, IN YOUR DREAMS is a collaboration with legendary producer/songwriter/genius/ex-Eurythmic Dave Stewart. It’s a collection we Stevie’s fanatic’s have been waiting for for over a decade…
IN YOUR DREAMS track listing
1. “Secret Love” 2. “For What It’s Worth” 3. “In Your Dreams” 4. “Wide Sargasso Sea” 5. “New Orleans” 6. “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)” 7. “Annabel Lee” 8. “Soldier’s Angel” 9. “Everybody Loves You” 10. “Ghosts Are Gone” 11. “You May Be the One” 12. “Italian Summer” 13. “Cheaper Than Free” 14. “My Heart” (UK Bonus Track)
iTunes offered this free video download from the album, “Cheaper Than Free”, a trifle, sure, but sweetly built on Stevie and Dave’s 2-part harmony…
It was imminent, forthcoming really (too often, her near death experiences and hospital visits were the fodder for tabloid headlines and sickening TMZ-style sleazeball journalism all but proclaiming her demise) but it’s still a sad day in Hollywood and the world of cinema.
I can say nothing that a thousand far superior writers can, have and will about Dame Elizabeth – who has left us today at the age of 79. She was one of the last of the great Hollywood icons, a true “movie star”, something that’s been lacking in the movies these last few decades. She certainly was and remains a revered actress (the too-often tossed around lapel “legend” actually applies to her), winning two Oscars for Best Actress (still an elite club) for 1960s BUTTERFIELD 8 and 1966s WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF.
She was also a great and peerless humanitarian….
After helping initiate amfAR, in 1991 Taylor founded the The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF), which has raised countless millions of dollars for research. Her impetus was due to the death of her longtime friend, Rock Hudson, who succumbed to the disease in 1985. Her work for equality and understanding during the tumultuous beginnings of AIDS was profoundly tireless. Besides her two aforementioned Oscar wins and three other nominees (for 1957s RAINTREE COUNTY, 1958sCAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, 1959s SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER) she was awarded the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Academy Award in 1992 for her prodigious charitable work. It wasn’t enough to merely raise funds – she embraced her role fearlessly, understanding that while money was an absolute necessity, education and knowledge were the missing ingredients, and knowing it takes power to educate the uneducated mass.
Also one of the most beautiful women the movies (and world, really) has ever seen, Taylor’s natural, gorgeous violet eyes stunned the world into submission upon first arrival, and her magnificent beauty captivated fans for decades. They grew with Taylor, and every generation has succumbed to her charms and iconicity.
Rest In Peace, Dame Elizabeth. Will there ever be another like you?
One of the evils of flying, so I’m told (I’ve flown a total of TWO times my entire life, and that counts the destination and the homecoming), here and abroad, is the often paralyzing, exasperating flight delays and/or cancellations that are pretty much the norm at all airports. How many of us (or you) will be so lucky the next time your flight is postponed to have the timeless Cyndi Lauper waiting with you? And, ever more glorious, how many would be so honored to have her sing one of her signature classics to alleviate your discontent? That’s exactly what happened in a Buenos Aries airport a few days ago – as the festering frustrations began to mount, Lauper took to the mic. Thankfully, someone caught the magical moment with their phone.
And one has to think that if this happened in an American airport, Lauper would’ve been trampled to the ground and arrested by the security goons. Who would, no doubt, then ask her for her autograph and picture.
Oh, yeah. And if you haven’t already, PLEASE download/pickup/whatever it’s called these days Lauper’s 2010 Grammy-nominated Blues album, MEMPHIS BLUES. It is, quite simply, extraordinary.
They remain one of the few hipster “cult” bands who deserve the (sorta) mainstream success that they’ve (sorta) acquired. But how “cult” is a band, really, when your last two CDs lived at the upper realms of Billboard’s Top 200 album charts? Their 2007 release, NEON BIBLE, debuted and peaked at #2 – and their recent Grammy Winning ALBUM OF THE YEAR release, THE SUBURBS, debuted at the zenith of the charts.
I had a hearty laugh (as I always do at a hipster’s expense) at this video.
Dear America. You can keep your musical trash bags like Ke$ha. You can hold dear your atonal warblers like Rihanna (yeah, yeah, I know she’s from Barbados, but made her mark here in the US as a teen). You want your sterile Country music automatons like Carrie Underwood or your tone-deaf milquetoast Country queens like Taylor Swift? My pleasure – take them, please. Enjoy dodging the melisma of caterwaulers like Christina Aguilera – and, good luck; they’re your ears, not mine. Want everyday to be a tuneless Thanksgiving day? Revel in your discordant SciFi megatron turkey gobblers like Katy Perry.
That’s right, clueless masses. Continue to misprise breathtaking beauty – seamless, pure vocal talent – an unaffected gift as natural and as ethereal as any we’ve heard in many moons. That’s fine. Let the rest of us have Adele.
After surprisingly – yet elatedly (for those in the know) – being nominated for 4 Grammy Awards in 2009 (and winning Best Female Pop Performance for “Chasing Pavements” and Best New Artist) and another nod in 2010 (for “Hometown Glory”), Adele will release her second album, 21, on February 22. I’ve been absorbed in it since its UK release last month – it’s gorgeous.
Last night, she performed the track “Someone Like You” from 21 at the Brit Awards. Magnificent.
I’ve been known – much to the chagrin of many of my Little Monster friends – to handily and mercilessly knock Lady Gaga at every whim. Perusing online, I’ve come across countless times my exaggerated disgust for her machinations resulted in comments curious of her longevity. Well, something funny happened during the course of 2010. No, my opinion of her music wasn’t altered much, but my respect for Lady Gaga – as a woman and public figure – took a turn. And, believe it or not, I have Oprah Winfrey to thank for that.
Previously avoiding all print/online/TV things Gaga (I mean, after all, there was nothing this attention whore could possibly invoke that would negate my aversion), I admittedly watched with prejudiced curiosity. What happened was something I didn’t expect. Here was arguably the most popular entertainer on earth – the most talked about, the most controversial, simultaneously the most maligned and worshiped since the heyday of Madonna’s hierarchy, and there didn’t seem to be a haughty bone in her body. Rarely have I witnessed such humility, such earthiness (I know!), such devotion to fans from a pop star of Gaga’s uber-popularity. For all the comparison hubbub, here was the antithesis of Madonna.
It was almost an epiphany. Was I allowing my distaste for her glaring attention-seeking shenanigans (and ersatz first few singles) to miss the abutment of performance art and commerce, from a tough New York cookie with a heart of gold? Sure, such combinations aren’t that new. Madonna – minus the heart of gold, natch – explored the art/commerce agenda brilliantly since her “Like A Virgin” performance at the VMAs over two decades ago (most unsuccessfully – in idea and ideal, anyway – during her EROTICA/SEX/BODY OF EVIDENCE debacle). Purely as an entity, I wanna hang out in the East Village with Gaga, smoke some pot, and throw back a few whiskey sours. And I’ve never smoked pot and loathe whiskey. The Power Of Gaga! (Of course, such brazen tangibility just might be a small ingredient in Gaga’s world domination brew…)
One should always let the music speak for itself, of course, and not be deterred one way or the other from outside sources, so I thought, in light of my ‘a-ha!’ Oprah/Gaga moment, that it was my duty to spelunk her debut with a different, less prejudiced mindset.
Sigh.
THE FAME still felt sonically antiquated, overstuffed; a dance neophyte who had yet to pass the audition. True, THE FAME MONSTER (a sorta addendum to THE FAME, and actually released around the world as a ‘deluxe’ edition) proved an infinitely hookier, more psycho-sexualized transgression. That it includes a song for the ages, “Bad Romance” didn’t hurt. But I just couldn’t get over the feeling that I was being (musically, anyway) conned.
Remember, Miss Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta wasn’t born Lady Gaga. She started her career as another whiny piano-playing singer/songwriter (never had enough of those in the late 90s early aughts, huh?) playing the night club circuit who, when she got nowhere fast because she sounded like every other angsty girl-with-a-piano, decided to write chintzy dance pop songs we’ve heard a thousand times before, only juxtaposing her aesthete was a concoction of cult figures, myriads and icons alike. There was more than a mere dash of Dale Bozzio, more than a smidgen of Grace Jones, more than a measly modicum of Leigh Bowery. All gelled together, with a heaping dose of the Material Girl thrown in, she sought to conquer what she most desired – fame – and became victor.
Yeah, yeah, I know – since time immemorial, Rock ‘N Roll’s been populated with “borrowed” musicality. You can hear the history of Muddy Waters in Led Zeppelin’s whole catalogue; you can feel the ectoplasm of early archetypes like Waters, Bo Diddly, Little Richards, etc. throughout the Rolling Stones’ classic canon. The sounds of gay, urban, black 70s era R&B and disco saturates the bloodline of Madonna’s 20+ year chartulary. There are shades of music history’s past in every present.
But there’s a fine line between “shades of” and “blatant”. “Born This Way” is such an elaborate – maybe intentional? – “Express Yourself” sound-alike that I half expect Gaga to move to England and acquire a phony, uncomfortable English accent! Forget melody (too obvious) – even the chord progression is too close for comfort. And, to my ears, there are more that a few tints of TLCs “Waterfalls” in the verse cadence. When, on release day, I posted on Facebook (and on YouTube) that perhaps it should be renamed “Express Waterfalls”, Gaga’s army went on the attack. That I wasn’t the only one who heard echoes of T-Boz, Chili and Left Eye was little consolation…though I do thank you, YouTube stranger, for this:
Even though he’s using the wrong section of “EY” (it should be the bridge), am I wrong to think Madonna and TLC should reap in royalties?
These accusations aren’t new to Gaga, of course. It was almost a year ago that Gaga faced similar accusations when her controversial video and single for “Alejandro” was released. The song’s/video’s overt similarities (in sound) to Ace of Bace’s “Don’t Turn Around” and (in vision) Madonna (again) were palpable and evident and the blogosphere couldn’t get enough. Every icon has his/her “haters”, true. Gaga’s haters hated, and her minions steadfastly stood by their queen.
One might surmise, not incorrectly, that the “Born This Way” (or “Express Yourself”, for that matter) theme of self-empowerment isn’t exclusive to the LGBT community. Absolutely. But given Gaga’s historical gay alignment, one can’t argue that “gay rights” is at the core – and the genesis – of its central theme (and none of these latest attacks/accusations negates its Hi-NRG exuberance or its surefire gay anthem aesthetics; the clubs will be thud-thud-thudding this along for months to come, straight into and beyond this summer’s gay pride festivities). Its imminent status in the gay rights movement is almost a given.
Sample lyrics:
Don’t be a drag, just be a queen Whether you’re broke or evergreen You’re black, white, beige, chola descent You’re Lebanese, you’re orient Whether life’s disabilities Left you outcast, bullied, or teased Rejoice and love yourself today ‘Cause baby you were born this way
No matter gay, straight, or bi, Lesbian, transgendered life I’m on the right track baby I was born to survive No matter black, white or beige Chola or orient made I’m on the right track baby I was born to be brave
Hey, no one’s ever accused Gaga of a poetic hierarchy, as these lyrics hammer-point home. But, while her choice of vernacular and syntax might be confounding (her use of the word “orient” is causing some minor controversy), rarely – probably never – in the history of pop music has someone of her mega-status been so forthright, so adamant, so positive, so universal in a pro-gay (read: human) rights stance.
I won’t proclaim absolute conversion just yet (and as a 45 year old, it would be – or should be – an embarrassment to call myself a “little monster”), but as homogeneous guilty pleasure, it’s hook-laden and damned catchy. More importantly, though, if “Born This Way” influences one disillusioned youngster – downtrodden by the darkest forces and most vile animosity from so-called humanity, terrified of the world that refuses to accept their innateness – if it breaks free the shackles of suicide as a pain-ending finale – then let it ring from the mountain tops and across the globe.
If ever a musical were created on the concept of Dan Savage’s important and groundbreaking It Gets Better project, “Born This Way” should not only be it’s theme song, but it’s mantra.
My New Boyfriend 